What Happened on Reddit Part2

Discovering a Korean-speaking Reddit community

Yesterday I was curious which country Y8 was based in, so I googled it. Among the search results were several Reddit threads, and one written in Korean caught my eye.
“I uploaded my game to Steam, and it turned out my game was also on Y8. I never gave permission for that……”
I clicked to read more, and it turned out to be a Korean-speaking Reddit community. I logged in, and found myself back in [Weird Estate], the account that got banned last year. I could view it, but not post.
So I switched to my other account and got a new username. The new name was [Ok-Wait]. It sounded like something you’d say to a dog — “Okay, wait for your treat” — but it was still better than [Weird Estate].
This community also required 5 karma points before you could post. I joined and started commenting. My goal was to get upvotes. When someone posted a photo of the gukbap they had for dinner, I commented “That looks delicious.” When someone posted a photo of their cat, I commented “So cute.” When someone complained that karma was hard to build, I wrote, “I need karma too, and I’ve been upvoting everyone here — please upvote me back.”

A vanished comment brings back last year’s trauma

Then, somehow, one of my comments disappeared. Last year too, a bot had wiped out my posts entirely. It seemed like the moderators had deleted my comment because I’d carelessly mentioned, “I got banned last year because I didn’t understand karma.” I started drafting a message to the community moderators.

“I joined Reddit last year, and since I didn’t know English well, I never built karma, never joined communities properly, never read the rules, and just posted whatever the AI told me to. After getting a warning, I stopped building karma and stopped coming to Reddit — and then I got permanently banned. It really felt unfair. I wasn’t banned for doing anything unethical. Today, while searching Google for something else, I stumbled on a Korean-speaking Reddit community and got so excited that I rushed right in. I’m sorry if I came across as too eager. I’m 67-years-old, an indie game developer and a Brunch writer, and I distribute the games I make on a platform called ‘Soosooland.’ I’m sorry — I only came here to build karma.”

Halfway through writing that, I stopped myself: wait, keep this up and I’ll ruin everything.
I stared at my comment. Strangely, it sat inside a yellow box — only my username showed, the content itself was invisible. Before sending the message to the moderators, I decided to log out and check how it looked from the outside. And just like that, my comment came back to life.

Deciding to really commit to Reddit

Unlike last year, the browser now had a Korean translation feature built in, so everything was easy to read. I noticed I’d racked up 7 badges on my profile — even though I only had 1 karma point. I knew perfectly well that a pile of achievement badges with no karma means nothing, but I still wanted more of them anyway. The badges were cute. For convenience, I downloaded the Reddit app, but it had no translation feature, so I deleted it right away — otherwise I’d keep getting redirected to the app whenever I tried to open Reddit from Chrome. Logging into Reddit through Chrome lets you use the translation.

Realizing again how hard karma is to earn

I’d assumed today was the first time I’d made a new account since last year’s ban. It wasn’t. Last year I’d actually made two accounts, and only one of them got banned. So the comments I’d written last year were still sitting there.
Back then, because I found it endearing that foreigners wanted to learn Korean and loved Korean culture, I’d used ChatGPT to translate and carefully written comments to help them — explaining Korea’s confusing number-reading system, the subtle differences between similar-sounding words. Not a single one got an upvote. And the post from yesterday got no upvotes either.

The reason none of my posts ever got upvoted

Suddenly, a chill ran through me, and it clicked.
Here’s the email I got when I was banned last year:
You have a new message from u/reddit

u/reddit
Your account has been permanently banned
Your account has been permanently banned for breaking the rules.
This account has been permanently closed. To continue using Reddit, please log out and create a new account (the username u/Weird_Estate7229 cannot be reused).
If you feel like this account was banned in error, visit our Help Center to learn more how to file an appeal.
This is an automated message; responses will not be received by Reddit admins.

The email only mentioned [Weird Estate] — nothing about my other account.
But behind the scenes, since both accounts were logging in from the same environment, [Ok-Wait] had quietly been shadowbanned right along with it. That’s why my comments were only visible to me — invisible to everyone else. No matter how well I wrote, nobody could ever have upvoted them. Even that one upvote I did get must have landed in the split second before the bot rendered my comments invisible.

Everyone says Reddit is the best for promotion, so I gave it another shot — but it’s disappointing, and there’s nothing to be done about it.
Goodbye, Reddit. Not nice meeting you. Let’s never meet again.
🪄 Written by Soosoo, translated by Claude

#Indie Game Dev #Reddit #Game Marketing #Solo Developer #Personal Essay